The Long High Noon by Loren D. Estleman

Author:Loren D. Estleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466813397
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

SEVENTEEN

Diplomacy is crucial to enterprise. Many a promising arrangement has failed for lack of a judicious word.

“One watch, tin,” said the clerk behind the bars.

Frank said, “Platinum, you ignorant son of a bitch.”

“One wallet, empty.”

“I had a dollar in it when I got here.”

“Take it up with the day man.”

“Forget it. I’d as lief start over clean anyway.”

“One Remington Frontier Model revolver, forty-five caliber. You need to replace those grips.”

“I’m used to ’em.”

“One cartridge belt and holster, cowhide.”

He strapped on the belt and slid the weapon into the worn wraparound holster.

“One quarter, two nickels, one penny: thirty-six cents total. Sign here.”

Frank Farmer scribbled his name on the receipt the clerk had thrust through the opening in the bars and left the jail. No one was waiting for him outside the ironbound oak door leading to a back street. His clothes were rumpled, his imperial whiskers blurred with stubble, and one eye was nearly swollen shut, although he allowed as he’d given as good as he got when the men in uniform dragged him out of the saloon; one had gone over the bar into the bottles in back, he’d elbowed another’s nose flat, and the drunk-and-disorderly they’d dumped into the neighboring cell the next day said he’d heard a third man wound up with a splint on his arm.

A judge with hair sprouting from his ears had sentenced Frank to three days underground for concealing a firearm and tacked on another ten for resisting arrest. He’d been given the choice of paying a fine of fifty dollars instead, but being as how he’d had only a dollar thirty-six cents to his name it wasn’t a choice at all.

A wooden barber pole scratched all over by men striking matches hung outside a brick building on the corner. He turned in through the door. “Shave.”

A man in striped shirtsleeves with his hair parted in the middle looked up from the newspaper he was reading in a chrome-and-leather chair and took him in from head to foot.

“Fifteen cents.”

Frank slapped a quarter on the counter, stirring loose hairs there. The barber got up, made change from a General Jackson cigar box, and snapped the creases out of a cotton sheet.

The shop was all white enamel and black-and-white tile, with oak cabinets containing personalized shaving mugs and foo-foo juice in ornate bottles with glass stoppers. It smelled of citrus. Advertisements on the walls illustrated various sports with splendid curls and elegantly curved moustaches, and signs assured customers YES, WE CUT WET HAIR and offered special rates for children under age ten. Men wearing tights struck pugilistic poses inside pasteboard frames—showing off, thought Frank, for the lady in her underwear in the middle.

Reclined looking up at the pressed tin ceiling, he eased the Remington out of its holster and rested it on his lap under the sheet.

The barber whipped up a lather in a mug with a badger brush. “Interest you in your own mug? Fifty cents. Your name on it in copperplate, script, or fancy old English.

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